Presented by Jon Heller in Presentation (45 min).

For a long time, the ability to create powerful and dynamic web experiences rested in the hands of developers. Even something as simple as adding a call to action in the middle of an article could be a confusing process.

The recent release of the Gutenberg editor for WordPress, however, blows wide open the capability for editors themselves to create engaging content without needing to rely on unintuitive menus or painful workflows. At this talk, we will look at a few projects we’ve built using Gutenberg and discuss both the advantages and challenges of this new editor.

Presented by Joseph Lichterman, Emily Roseman in Workshop (90 min).

Joseph Lichterman (The Lenfest Institute for Journalism) and Emily Roseman (Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School), along with other speakers will host a hands-on workshop to help publishers take their newsletters to the next level.

This workshop is based on the Newsletter Guide, a resource created by Shorenstein, Lenfest, and Yellow Brim to help publishers engage readers with well-crafted newsletters. Topics covered will include types of newsletters, workflows, growing lists, monetization, and evaluating success.

Presented by Kevin Fodness in Presentation (45 min).

The pre-Gutenberg editorial experience in WordPress leaves much to be desired. There is the ostensibly what-you-see-is-what-you-get content editor that is invariably augmented with metaboxes to collect additional information about how the post should be displayed, including content that appears above or below the post body, or in a sidebar, or inserted into the post’s metadata. There are two primary problems with this approach—it is necessarily non-visual, and relies heavily on using post previews to understand what the published post will look like; and it is rigid, because PHP templates control what appears where outside of the freeform content editor. Gutenberg, properly utilized, solves both of these problems by bringing content into the primary editor flow as blocks which can be fully visualized and re-ordered, allowing content editors to see and understand what a post will look like and how it will behave before publishing, without needing to continually refresh a post preview.

This talk will discuss how developers can support content editors and publishers by moving away from metaboxes to custom blocks and post-level metadata. I will explain how to think Gutenberg-first during design and development, and showcase examples of these approaches in practice.

Presented by Lucia Walinchus in Presentation (45 min).

The open web often conflicts with the proprietary one, and courts have been behind on things to say the least.

This talk would look at the big decisions that have affected publishers over the last year, and it would highlight some key cases still under review that could affect publishers.

Presented by Theresa Spencer in Presentation (45 min).

In this lightning talk, Theresa will discuss the benefits of leveraging WordPress in a fast-paced industry of sports media. The combination of WordPress functionality and plugins to fulfill a unique set of requirements. She’ll highlight the importance of understanding KPIs and business strategy as a technical stakeholder to quickly architect, develop and support an efficient and lean technical platform to achieve company goals and drive initiatives.

Presented by Davis Shaver in Workshop (90 min).

We’ll talk a lot about technology at this conference – what’s happening at the cutting edge and with the largest publishers. But what about elsewhere? What’s the experience of publishers on the smaller end of the spectrum? What’s the practical reality of launching a news site in 2019?

In this presentation, we will:

• Review a technological census of local digital-first startup publishers
• Hear from multiple hyperlocal publishers themselves in a short span of highly curated video interviews that capture how real life publishers think about their publishing technology, and most importantly what pain points they encounter.
• Take a look at the emerging solutions in this space (e.g. NewsPack)

Presented by Nathan B. Weller in Presentation (45 min).

In this presentation we’ll explore the underlying structures all stories share, explain how every member of a publishing team can benefit from this understanding. We’ll take a look at some specific examples, and attendees will leave the session inspired and reinvigorated with their storytelling approach.

Presented by Mike Auteri.

This is a story about a paywall. When this paywall was first created, it was made to be very firm and strong. No one was getting passed it, even if they were savvy enough to disable JavaScript or mess around with the browser inspector. Years later, with a changing of the guard, someone came in to the marketing department looking to shake things up. This person wanted to implement a bypass to the paywall that would allow unregistered users access to paid content. I was the engineer tasked with this seemingly difficult assignment. In this talk I will discuss the steps taken to fully grokking the task and all its requirements, which lead to a solution that worked seamlessly with our current architecture in a very reasonable timeframe.

Presented by Jay Cullis, Andrew Cafourek.

In May 2019, Airstream will debut a new lifestyle brand driven by an editorial-first ethos of online retail. With compelling storytelling, products come off the shelves and share in our travels, becoming fellow adventurers available for the reader to discover without ever leaving home (or the content). In this case study of product development for “editorial commerce”, we’ll explore the strategic, operational and technical journey of creating the Airstream Supply Company as a “big brand with a small team”.

We’ll showcase the promise of Gutenberg being realized in an editorial experience that allows deep connections between content creation and product data within a custom Block library and semi-headless React site, driven entirely by the WordPress REST API + GraphQL. Striking a balance of technical insights with strategic analysis, our lessons and achievements can be a guide to anyone building a modern editorial or eCommerce experience with WordPress and WooCommerce.

Presented in Presentation (45 min), Workshop (90 min).

“Newspack: Listen First, Develop Second,” a process of creating a custom news vertical for WordPress.com
Jefferson Rabb (Automattic)

“Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting on WordPress,” a journalism-focused walk-through with the founder of a hyperlocal Local Switchboard NYC podcast
Jordan Gass-Porré (Mother Jones)

“Managing Site Networks,” a spotlight in prioritizing and focusing for a collection of sites Beth Davidz (Hearst)

“Another Click in the Paywall,” an engineering story about building, iterating, and growing a customizable paywall
Mike Auteri (Penske Media Corporation)

Presented by Seth Alling in Presentation (45 min).

Last year, Google incorporated the Lighthouse tool into its PageSpeed Insights API for mobile. This tool checks a web page to determine how optimal the mobile experience is a for a visitor. As more than half of Internet traffic comes through mobile devices, these are the visitors that need to be prioritized.

Earlier this year Mediavine began developing a WordPress theme framework built for speed. The goal was to achieve a perfect score on Lighthouse, while maintaining all of the basic WordPress content creation functionality.

This session focuses on the individual aspects Lighthouse analyzes, and how Mediavine was able to optimize that framework for each of those areas during the development of a theme. The purpose of this presentation will be to supply insight on how organizations can achieve a higher Lighthouse score and improve their own search engine ranking, while providing an optimal experience for their readers.

Presented by Kevin O’Gorman, Emma Carew Grovum in Workshop (90 min).

Is your phone secure? Do you leave a trail online while following up on leads? In the age of ubiquitous surveillance, what can you do to protect your sources? If your newsroom isn’t regularly talking about digital security threats and strategies, the time to act is now. Join us for a 90 minute workshop, where we’ll give an introduction to common tools used by newsrooms to improve their security and protect themselves and their sources. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have worked in small groups to create the start of a plan to help your newsroom become more secure online.

This workshop builds on top of the Security Field Guide created by OpenNews and BuzzFeed Open Lab.

Presented by Zack Tollman in Presentation (45 min).

We all want fast sites, but what is fast? What is performant? We may know it when we see; yet quantifying and communicating about web performance effectively is still a challenge. In this talk, we will discuss our ever-evolving set of standards for what comprises a fast site. With special attention to the problems that ads and analytics present for publishers, we will discuss how antiquated notions of web performance are a ripe environment for abuses by 3rd party code. Finally, we will discuss techniques for improving performance monitoring as a tool for institutional change.

Presented by Amee Mola, Paul Barthmaier, Nici Catton in Presentation (45 min).

In this panel, we will be assessing the business decisions media companies face when considering migrations. We’ll talk about the choices that our panelists have had to make, tough lessons learned, along with some practical considerations for executing a well-run migration.

Presented by Keanan Koppenhaver in Presentation (45 min).

With the introduction of the block editor, the WordPress ecosystem and editing experience has shifted, particularly for teams who were deeply familiar with the Classic Editor and had workflows and tooling designed around that. With editorial under pressure to continue producing content, it can be tough to put together a plan to move your site, especially if it’s a large site, over to the new editor.

In this talk, we’ll explore the migration path to Gutenberg at a high level and some strategies for making the transition as seamless as possible. We’ll also drill down and get tactical, with tasks that development and editorial can work on together. These include an audit of existing components and workflow and making a plan for how these might be implemented in the new editor.

By the end, you will have some strategies for helping your team transition to the new editor and take advantage of all Gutenberg has to offer.

Presented by Dwayne McDaniel in Workshop (90 min).

WordPress’ command line interface, WP-CLI is a robust, easy to understand administrative that can help anyone with a WordPress site speed up workflows and automate a lot of complex tasks.

Over time, every developer finds themselves chaining together multiple commands and building bash aliases to accomplish repeated tasks. One of the most powerful aspects of an Open Source tool is GPL Freedom ‘to change the software to suit your needs’. This session will take you through the process of examining the code and building your first WP-CLI command.

It is easier than you think and the same core principles can be applied to any open source tool you use.

Walk away with:
– A new appreciation for the customizability command line.
– The desire to script ‘all the things’ to save time.
– Ideas about how to automate your processes to be more productive

Presented by Ben May in Presentation (45 min).

We know WordPress is a great foundation for most publishers, but the modern web is becoming more and more demanding of our publishing platforms. Building more dynamic and complex web experiences are putting pressure on WordPress to deliver, especially at scale.

In this talk, Ben will discuss and feature some work The Code Company are doing to build best of breed WordPress publishing platforms for their clients. Specifically,  how their team work in a microservice architecture approach, native within WordPress, while resisting the urge to introduce additional technologies.

At the end of this talk, you’ll go away with some different ideas around how to architect and build more advanced services for high traffic WordPress sites without going over the top and some examples of what can go wrong.

Presented in Presentation (45 min), Workshop (90 min).

“Creating Airstream Supply Company, An Editorial Commerce Brand, With Gutenberg and React,” an exploration of the operational and technical journey behind editorial commerce for the Airstream Supply Company.
Andrew Cafourek (Lat Long) and Jay Cullis (Airstream)

“#NoStalking,” on identifying opportunities to return to advertising aimed at audiences based on context, that don’t require 3rd party data, tracking users across the web, or sharing first party data out to others.
John Eckman (10up)

“7 Resume Tips in 7 Minutes,” a review of current resume practices with a master resume writer with 19 years of experience.
Susan Geary (1st Rate Resumes)

“We’re Not Alone in the (Code) Universe,” a focus on building a culture of experimentation for large publishers.
Chris Van Patten (Tomodomo)